Agenda

Tee up your week at the GEOINT 2012 Symposium with a round of golf and innumerable networking opportunities at the Allder Golf Classic. Named in honor of William R. Allder Jr., the golf tournament proceeds help fund the annual USGIF Scholarship Program, which supports students pursuing education excellence in fields related to the geospatial intelligence tradecraft.

Mr. Cope is the Director, Basic and Applied Research at NGA. In this role he is responsible for conceptualizing, communicating, and actively exploring innovative strategies to conduct basic and applied research and development for GEOINT that supports future science and technologies in core multidisciplinary areas such as geodesy and geophysics (gravity models, World Geodetic System), sensors (remote sensing), image science (photogrammetry), information technology (massive data challenge), as well spatial aspects of social sciences in support of human geography applications.

Software is slowly becoming a commodity, via increased use of Open Source Software (PSS). This session will detail some of the tactical uses of OSS both inside private industry and inside the government GEOINT domain—where agencies from the Army Corps of Engineers to NSA to NGA have discovered the practical benefits of OSS, and how adopting an open strategy can better meet the needs of their stakeholders and address the realities of declining budgets.

Hollow tools with incomplete data can’t help the decision maker: collecting the data to drive Human Geography analysis remains a challenge. Can the Human Geography data collection process be streamlined, and more easily trained? This session will provide a snapshot of both proven and evolving data collection techniques that leverage mobile devices. Panelists will address how the data can be collected and loaded from anywhere, anytime. In addition, panel experts will discuss data integrity, backed by proven theory and grounded in unique case studies.

Open Source Software (OSS) has moved from being a backroom, developers-only domain to a frontline component inside key military capabilities. OSS isn’t doing everything—yet—but it is slowly commoditizing key strategic parts of geospatial infrastructure, from perating systems to databases to applications. In this session, key government program managers will discuss where and how they see OSS moving to solve warfighter needs, as well as assess the gaps in OSS investment and capabilities.

The research, analytic, and operations communities have been searching for ways to efficiently and effectively access human geography data. To fully understand the nature of any data stored spatially, it is important to understand the relationship between the stored data and the real world it depicts. Data storage is not a one size fits all solution, but a complex interwoven tapestry composed of theory, technology, innovation, and lessons learned. This session brings together a diverse set of individuals who address components of storing Human Geography information, presenting a series of challenges for the audience to grapple with how to further innovate, extend existing platforms, and learn from the past.

Jeff Jonas is chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. The IBM Entity Analytics group was formed based on technologies developed by Systems Research & Development (SRD), founded by Jonas in 1984 and acquired by IBM in January 2005. Prior to the IBM’s acquisition of SRD, Jonas lead it through the design and development of a number of extraordinary systems including technology used by the surveillance intelligence arm of the gaming industry. Leveraging facial recognition, this technology enabled the gaming industry to protect itself from aggressive card count teams, the most notable known as the MIT team and the subject of the book “Bringing Down the House” as well as the recent movie “21.” Today, possibly half the casinos in the world use technology created by Jonas and his SRD team. This work is frequently featured on the Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, and the Travel Channel.

This session brings together forward thinkers across academia, industry, and government to discuss the innovative uses of Gaming Technologies in GEOINT. This session will begin with four, fifteen minute, talks followed by a panel discussion comprised of our four speakers. The speakers will present their creative uses of gaming technologies in the pursuit of better intelligence. The goal of this session is to broaden the audience’s awareness far beyond what is conjured to mind by the word “gaming” and to shine a light on the wide range of applications to national security and intelligence activities. This session will address technical and research programs associated with the use of gaming technologies and the potential improvements and changes to the intelligence process in government, developer, and academic contexts.

This session engages a dialogue on existing and missing analytic/technology approaches and solutions for addressing and understanding the space/time progression of socio-cultural events that occurred across the Arab world beginning in December 2010. US government viewpoints will be shared on the relevant national security issues that need to be addressed pointing to the priorities for research and development to addressing the needs, acadmics will discuss relevant research that provides a promise to solving the problem, and industry representatives will describe current practices in approaching these and similar national security challenges. Session attendees will have opportunity during Q&A to address the problems/needs/gaps, as well as explore connections between academia and industry towards filling those gaps.

Join some of GEOINT’s most innovative minds for these fun, fast-paced talks on the trends and technologies facing our profession. Each talk lasts five minutes, giving participants just enough time to energize their minds on topics of interest, before two hours of free time to pursue any conversations that interest you in a more sociable environment!

Join your colleagues for the GEOINT 2012 Welcome Reception. USGIF welcomes you on Monday with a delightful evening of all the sights, sounds and flavors of Havana as we pay homage to the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.